Month: May 2017

CIO explains that “Digital transformation is fundamentally changing the way companies do their business.” In fact the publication believes it is imperative that companies zero in on their communication strategy.

In large part this is because the communications scene is changing so rapidly. Once upon a time there were a few big publications that reached everywhere. But today those same publications are often reviled and called names.

As digital transformation involves dedicated efforts across multiple dimensions, it can’t merely be a task assigned to a single department or function. A cross-company approach is needed, especially as unlike the “digital disruptors” – companies with an entirely digital business model such as Uber, Airbnb, or Netflix – most organisations need to go through a transformation process of the company as such.

A majority of corporations are building digital platform to accompany their communication efforts.

The key areas in which organizations can draw most value from the data are around customers, finance, and operations, making them the most critical ingredients to any business model. Digital platforms allow disruptive companies to structure the internal data, combine it with external information sources, and make it available for real-time analysis.

Most successful enterprises are trying hard to run communications efforts throughout the company. This has got to be done because modern communication is more than an isolated enterprise within a corporate context.

In fact the problem is wider than corporate participation. Corporations generally are going to have a good deal of trouble in the future. They are based on government force and the messaging is no less based on force.

How can this be? Because the modern corporation has achieved its size due to a number of government privileges.

First there are intellectual property rights. Then there is corporate personhood. Finally there are central banking and regulations. All of these contribute to the size of modern corporations.

Not all corporations mind you. But the very largest ones.

Additionally most if not all corporations have relationships with the CIA which in turn has relationships with London. Truly there are probably only a few corporations in the world as even large corporations are subsidiaries.

The amount of centralization is staggering. But as mentioned above all this may be changing. Many large corporations have middleman functions. And middlemen are on the way out.

A lot of this has to do with blockchain and cybercurrencies. As blockchain becomes more accepted, middleman work will become increasingly less necessary.

But beyond this, size itself will become less useful because people can use cybercurrencies and blockchain to create less gargantuan companies. Size will become less important as new firms spring up and work within the confines of smaller nation states.

As communication becomes less vast, it will also become less politically correct and more representative of the culture rather than the company. Right now corporate communication encourages globalism. Tomorrow it may be a good deal more honest.

The Menehune and Moriori are making a comeback. The Menehune comeback is a historical one while Moriori comeback is physical.

Both tribes are disruptors. That is they have a presence that is distinctly different than what is commonplace today and they disrupt normal ways of thinking about the past.

This is the same kind of disruption that is taking place on a larger level thanks to blockchain and cryptocurrencies. This kind of fintech gradually cuts out middlemen and gives rise to different sorts of sociopolitical environments.

We can already see changes starting to take place. Some of these changes are forward looking and some harken backwards to previous times when culture was less homogenous and peoples were more individuated.

The Menehune first.

This is widely held to be a race of little people that were the first inhabitants of Hawaii. They are miniature in stature and tended to work at night. Additionally they were said to have magical powers and could erect whole buildings in a single night.

Ironically there is a new movement focusing on ancient megalithic cultures that has similarities to the Menehune.

The megalithic (giant stone) cultures of Peru, China, Europe and Russia were said to have come out of the ancient past, maybe Atlantis. These people were survivors who then spread out over the world and taught ancient (advanced) ways to more primitive peoples.

Some of the races of the time were very small (dwarves) and some were very large (giants). The Smithsonian is said to have collected more than a million artifacts from these ancient periods that it will never show nor even reveal because of their controversial nature.

It certainly can be speculated that a race of dwarves, Menehune, found their way to Hawaii at some point. In Europe there are numerous underground megalithic structures that are built to accommodate small people – dwarves – and these peoples did indeed work underground.

Now the Moriori.

The Moriori are a sadder case because the entire full-blooded population of the New Zealand Moriori tribe was wiped out because they wouldn’t deviate from non-violent principles.

Today however this tribe is rebounding as perhaps 2.000 mixed blood Moriori are making a comeback on several islands including New Zealand itself.

Two Tribes

These two tribes, one legendary and one modern flesh-and-blood are examples of the kind of disruption that will take place more and more over time.

Ancient history will be unearthed and tribes will rise anew. The corporatist elements of modern society increasingly find themselves embattled as people wake up to different histories and cultural innovations.

Gradually the battle is being joined in earnest and tomorrow will look much different that today.

Blockchain can change agriculture via trust. If you can trust the numbers on a spreadsheet, you can work with it, and add to it. But many spreadsheet and accounting generally are not trustworthy.

Blockchain makes a difference by offering a distributed network using many so-called nodes to check the blockchain. It does away with double spending. It is distributed fintech and in larger iterations it is quite dependable.

When it comes to Monsanto itself, there is not much to say yet. But presumably Monsanto like other agricultural giants, could use blockchain to help make its accounting easier and cheaper, among other things.

Meanwhile plenty of American farmers are scared of the whole process and its results.

Monsanto and Bayer say that their upcoming merger will considerably boost research and innovation. But the actual additional amount may be about $500 million, versus the $2.5 billion they already spend.

The Monsanto Bayer merger is mostly about money. The idea is that the two companies will create even more efficiency that will bring down cost and raise additional product.

Blockchain might well help with this process but cybercurrencies like bitcoin can be used by almost anyone. It is perfectly possible that such fintech can be used for purposes of disruption.

There is no reason that Bayer and Monsanto alone will have advantages from blockchain and cybercurrencies. Many smaller entities may arise as a result of fintech and the results will reduce Monsanto’s and Bayer’s advantages.

This exclusive interview was conducted with Bill Hampel and includes some White Paper excerpts from CUNA as well.

Bill Hampel is Chief Economist and Chief Policy Officer of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), the largest and most influential national trade association advocating for America’s credit unions. There are nearly 6,700 credit unions nationwide, with about 100 million members and almost $1.1 trillion in assets.

BCN: You’ve been working on blockchain technology? How’s that going.

CUNA: We have the technology and now we are getting it to work. Permissionless blockchains are wide open and operate as a completely decentralized ledger. The white paper states:

Every transaction is cryptographically chained (or connected) to the previous transaction. The goal is a permanent, immutable and verifiable “record of truth” that everyone can see. The lack of censorship, complete visibility and total transparency creates a kind of “creative abrasion” amongst the users. The nature of a Permissionless Blockchain network is “censorship resistant”. The theory is that no one person or entity can edit chained entries. A statement of truth, for example, a transaction between two people, then becomes unchangeable. As an aside, highly regulated industries like financial services and the credit union industry specifically, appreciate the theory involved but federal regulators nevertheless have a hard time accepting that today, no controls exist anywhere regarding an unpermissioned network. Very scary for that group of professionals.

Our effort has been to build blockchain technology, and that’s just what we’ve done.

BCN: What is most valuable about blockchain.

CUNA: Once you have done the research, you can implement it. We can make it easy for customers to access what they need. Remember, we we provide the same services that a retail bank does. A member can have a savings account and various kinds of access including access to international transactions. On the other side of ledger we do consumer lending. Our owners happen to be our customers and we don’t have to maximize profit. We tend to have a bit of a longer view.

BCN: Let’s go back in time. Why did credit unions have a tough time back in the 70s and 80s.

CUNA: That was caused by end of Reg Q which limited the interest rates that one could pay on deposit accounts. The banking regulator says no more Reg Q. That was number one. Then Paul Volcker came in and lifted interest rates and the S&Ls shrank. All of a sudden you can pay whatever you want and we had short term loans that were low interest while our new rates were high interest. Credit unions went out of business as a result.

BCN? Anything else?

CUNA: Distributed ledger technology encourages collaboration. We can all share our computing power. We’d been working on this via blockchain and had a presentation for credit unions across the country. They were impressed enough to give us $500,000. As a result, we set up a small blockchain and started to develop it. Now we can show people what we have developed and roll it out.

As the white paper says

Just two years ago, a small group of CU professionals came together and began to articulate a vision. It was big and it was audacious then and it remains audacious today. What if a new technology called distributed ledger technology could be utilized by our industry to not only reduce our costs, but what if it could greatly reduce call center fraud and identity theft? What if we could create greater brand awareness for the credit union industry? Would it be possible to create significant growth for the industry, not just for a small number of credit unions, but all of them? What if the credit union industry owned and controlled a revenue producing technology platform that supported an entire industry?

Are those things even possible? The answer is yes. For the first time, that technology exists and is now in use in the credit union industry. It’s called CULedger and it’s a prototype “research to action” industry initiative designed to stand up a specific set of use cases to first prove the merits of the platform and second to launch both existing products as well as new and highly competitive products across the entire industry.

BCN: Obviously you’ve accomplished your goals?

CUNA: We’re in the process of helping to reduce the cost of operations. Can we improve the member experience? That’s something they want to know. We have demonstrated proof of concept but by the third or fourth quarter we will have something we can be full bore with. We have credit unions signing up to be nodes and we have an operating system that makes it work.

Ours is a permissioned ledger so that everyone is aware we are recording information. Our system is working. Any time 50 or more nodes get together, they can do plenty of stuff. Smart contracts housed on distributed ledgers can do things automatically that otherwise would require human beings to do.

BCN: That goes for international finance as well?

CUNA: We have efficient ways of moving money. We need this new technology for cross border transactions. For us the cooperative structure is at work.

BCN: You’ve moved faster than even the biggest banks.

CUNA: We have only one master. The big banks were hurt during the financial crisis. But we are growing at 4 percent a year and the population is one percent. The big banks have ATMs but we have an ATM network as well. The difference is that it’s not branded. But it is a full network. We’re competing well with commercial banks and others. That’s one reason they’re worried about us.

There are many disruptions in the world and the amount is gradually increasing as the next stage of the Internet becomes more ubiquitous.

Here at blockcitynews.com we are helping to usher in this next Internet wave in order to combat the bigness and destruction around us.

Disruption 1.0 was generated by companies like Apple and Google that have a monopoly on various areas of technology. Now we begin to have Disruption 2.0, which is disrupting the monopoly disruptors.

The current disruptors have turned into monopolies that are seen as natural outgrowths of capitalism, but they are no such thing.

When a company creates a product and receives patents, that company has a long term grip on technology that no one else can use.

It is this technology that forces growth rates skyward, probably helped in at least some cases by the CIA. Certainly Facebook and Google, to name just two, were given CIA funding.

These larger companies eventually come to dominate their respective enterprises. In the 21st century, this sort of domination is even more apparent than in the past.

Intellectual property rights are a large part of what spawns these gigantic companies. But there are also other factors.

Corporate person-hood, regulation and central banking all play roles in an increasingly fascist environment facilitated by Wall Street.

If things were allowed to take their course naturally, all four elements, above, would dissipate. Corporate person-hood, regulation, central banking and intellectual property rights constitute a four-part entity of government force that is not otherwise sustainable.

In fact, all four elements are enforced by the judiciary along with the executive and legislative branches.

To say that corporate property rights should be done away with is a big statement. But, in truth, for the most part, intellectual property rights benefit only a tiny group of people. Others derive some occasional benefit but not a lot.

Intellectual property rights only emerged after the founding of the Gutenberg Press which brought printed books to the world. It was actually a way of controlling dissemination of information that elites didn’t want to spread too fast or far.

Corporate person-hood, meanwhile, allows the corporation rather than individuals to be sued. This allows the real malfeasance – lodged in the hearts of men – to continue and expand.

Corporations themselves were not popular until after the Civil War. Thomas Jefferson, in particular, tried to restrain them and gave the power to create them to the states. Back in the 1700s, the largest corporations had their own armies.

Regulations are also promulgated by government force. They are gradually taking over as a main entity of judicial weaponry, outdoing the formality of trials and judicial process generally.

Finally there is central banking, which distorts entire economies, and again is imposed by force.

The largest corporations can take full advantage of central banking to buy when everyone else is selling as the result of a crash – either purposeful of not. Meanwhile, interest rates, low or high, can be turned to the advantage of the largest corporations as well.

Then there are issues involving harmony. This is an especially interesting area. Most music worldwide is placed at 440 hertz because the International Standards Organization (ISO) endorsed it in 1953.

But recently, knowledge has become more widespread regarding the destructive affects of 440 Hertz. This international concert pitch, to which instruments are tuned, may create general unhealthiness and anti-social behavior.

A=432 Hz, (Verdi’s ‘A’) is the mathematically consistent tuning, one that gives off healing energy because it is so-called “natural” tuning. The change from 432 Hz to 440 Hz was supposedly first made in Germany by Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels.

Many are aware by now that Hitler was at least in part funded by London and New York. Around 1940 the United States adopted 440 Hz worldwide, which then became the ISO 16-standard as well.

iPods or MP3 Players are a large part of the process in the modern day. These destructive frequencies stimulate the brain in the wrong direction, creating disease and war.

The change in pitch is just one part of a hidden battle to tolerate and even encourage war and destruction. It is facilitated by the world’s largest corporations, abetted by central banking, regulation, corporate person-hood and intellectual property rights.

Over the next years, the reality of Internet 2.0 will begin to show itself. The latest wave of gigantic corporations will gradually subside as peer-to-peer transactions inevitably become more mainstream.

The ruling, worldwide elite has gambled that they can control what is happening but chances are they cannot, certainly not fully. Blockchain and cybercurrencies, along with other technology, will gradually eliminate the middle men that are such a large part of elite domination.

The web of little known forces that that affect our mind and behavior will be exposed and changed. This won’t happen all at once and will be powerfully opposed by the forces of bigness and calculated destruction.

But people may not put up with what has been going on for much longer. As people become more aware of these controlling forces, they will cease to be controlled because they have other options.

As stated above, I am part of this process and will help encourage alternative ways of building society. This is not to say I oppose bigness, only the artificial kind that leads to so much destruction.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, wants everyone to have free money. He makes common cause with others in Silicon Valley who want the same thing.

He made the call at a recent Harvard commencement speech when he talked about the need to “modernize democracy”

“Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract,” Zuckerberg was reported to have said. “We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas.”

He added that a universal basic income would give people a cushion so they wouldn’t be afraid of investigating new ideas.

But we should be suspicious of young billionaires who make such remarks. Giving people a basic income would help people make a living but it would also give government tremendous control.

Zuckerberg thinks it is an extension of equality when it is actually an extension of state service, which never come without a price.

A universal income would provide an incentive for considerable increased corruption. We should be concentrating on removing regulations not adding to them.

A universal basic income will just make things worse. Everyone would end up as an extension of government power and ultimately few would have the wherewithal to oppose it.

Children will be able to learn mining for cybercurrencies, 3d printing and coding while they build their own computers, play on the beach and sail as part of an active camping experience.

That’s the curriculum that is being planned in regions as far flung as Hawaii and Uruguay. Children, staying in houses and dormitories, will be exposed to the outdoors during much of the day. But at the same time they will learn how to mine for cybercurrencies, 3d print and put together computers for less than $300.

It’s part of a process being developed by Kai Canoe, the brainchild of yachtsman and adventurer David Murry who has written the Kai children’s books. The Kai book series pays tribute to the rediscovered voyaging tradition of Polynesian culture and feature a young “island” pig named Kai who is befriended by the “Navigator.”

This Navigator is building a Polynesian Voyaging Canoe and intends to sail it around the world. When Kai stows away on the Navigator’s double-hulled canoe, his adventures really begin. The Hokule’a is a full scale Hawaiian version which is returning home after a 5 year circumnavigation.

The idea of the larger Kai Canoe environment is to get children working together. Computers can be printed in a living room using a modest-sized printer. So can smartphones and even more 3d printers should be printed and made available to more of the community. Then bring on the widely distributed disruption! The computers can be developed via such formats as the commercially available Pi-Top.

The Pi-Top has all the functions of a normal laptop, but its inventors hope it will be used to teach children to become more computer literate by learning how to dismantle and reassemble it.

In addition to creating their own computer, children will have the opportunity to “mine” bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The equations necessary for the mining are already available and simply need to be plugged in.

Children can help Kai Canoe raise a good deal of awareness and literacy at Camp Kai. This in turn will help the children become more prepared for the future. Camp Kai is funded by investors for an eventual shift to a non-profit organization after 20 years. Proceeds then are 100% returned to educating the next generations of leaders.

The other major aspect of the Kai Coin involves a novel decentralized method to create new stories through the preservation of endangered and extinct cultures. The 3d animation of the Kai stories will in turn create a myriad of print and multimedia products.

Ultimately, people will be able to create their own Kai stories and some may be chosen for e-books, video-games and animation.

The Kai Canoe program is modeled on the Finnish education system which is the most successful program of its type. Finnish students are in school four to five hours a day, and the rest of the time are playing either outside or inside – with no homework.

For more information, please write to David Murry at adventureiscalling@gmail.com.

Thomson Reuters has been collaborating with customers on blockchain and distributed ledger initiatives and powerful proof-of-concept projects for some time now. The opportunities afforded by this emerging technology are enormously exciting for us and for our customers, and our goal with R3 is to collaborate together with the consortium and our customers in these key industry discussions as we shape the future of financial transactions.

However, the R3 consortium began to change its focus on blockchain technology and big banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Santander departed from the group.

The banks put money into Axoni, a US blockchain company. Reuters said the withdrawal came from an arguement over R3CEV’s request for $200 million. Later, R3 raised that amount in a fund raiser that netted over $100 million.

R3 is no longer primarily focused on blockchain but the other banks want to move ahead with it. R3 meanwhile is focused more on cybercurrencies such as ripple and is getting accusations it deceived investors.

R3 has said it never wanted to primarily cultivate blockchain. However, that’s how the company initially marketed itself.

Its new focus is comes with problems as well. Ripple itself is intended to cut the time that banks spend in transferring money. But ultimately central banks are in charge of how banks transfer money and part of the delays stem from making sure all transactions are scanned and stored.

Until there is less emphasis on surviellence both domestically and internationally the longterm solutions developed by banks will be at least questionable and probably not secure.